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Sunday, March 11, 2012

Voter Suppression in America to get a Hearing by United Nations in Geneva

I wasn't able to confirm this on the official NAACP website, but a number of news sources have reported that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) intends to bring international attention to the voter suppression efforts that have been sweeping across America in States mainly controlled by conservative Republicans.A sample of three versions of the story follow.

NAACP to call on UN to investigate voter disfranchisement in US

Delegation to travel to Geneva to tell human rights council that attempt is being made to restrict black and Latino right to vote

The leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, will travel to Geneva next week to tell the UN human rights council that a co-ordinated legislative attempt is being made by states across America to disfranchise millions of black and Latino voters in November's presidential election.

The delegation, headed by the NAACP's president, Benjamin Jealous, will address the council on Wednesday and call on the UN body to launch a formal investigation into the spread of restrictive electoral laws, particularly in southern states. The NAACP intends to invite a UN team to travel across America to see for itself the impact of the new laws, which it argues are consciously designed to suppress minority voting.

The UN has no power to intervene in the workings of individual American states. But Jealous told the Guardian that the UN had a powerful weapon in its armoury: shame.

"Shame alone is effective. The US, and individual states within the US that have introduced these laws, have a vested interest in maintaining the opinion that we are the world's leading democracy. That means something," Jealous said.

In the NAACP's view, the voting rights of black and other minority groups are under more threat from laws restricting their participation at the ballot box than at any time since the segregationist days of Jim Crow.

There are already 19 new laws on the books in 14 different states, which between them account for 63% of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the US presidential race in November. Some laws involve a requirement to show photo identification in polling stations – disproportionately hitting black and elderly people, who often do not have such ID.

Other laws have cut back on early voting schemes, heavily used by ethnic minority and older people, and still others disfranchise former convicted prisoners, even in some cases years after their sentences were completed. [ more from The Guardian at the URL below]

Next week, the NAACP is taking the unusual step of bringing a complaint to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva over voter identification laws, passed in several states, which they say constitute voting rights violations. As William Douglas reports, this isn't a new tactic for the group:

The Geneva appearance is part of an NAACP strategy rooted in the 1940s and 1950s, when the group looked to the United Nations and the international community for support in its domestic battle for civil rights for blacks and against lynching.

"It was in 1947 that W.E.B. Dubois delivered his speech and appealed to the world at the U.N.," NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous said Thursday. "Now, like then, the principal concern is voting rights. The past year more states in this country have passed more laws pushing more voters out of the ballot box than any point since Jim Crow."

The changes in question this time around are new laws that would require photo identification or proof of citizenship before people cast ballots, as well as proposals to eliminate same-day voter registration and rescind the voting rights of convicted felons who have served their time. The NAACP says these laws are restrcition similar to the poll taxes and literacy tests that once prevented blacks from voting in U.S. elections.

NAACP to challenge state voting laws before U.N. panel in Geneva

BY WILLIAM DOUGLAS

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- Taking a page from its past, the NAACP will go before a United Nations panel in Switzerland this week to argue that new voting laws approved by some U.S. states violate civil and human rights by suppressing the votes of minorities and others.

A delegation from the venerable civil rights organization will present its case in Geneva on Wednesday before the United Nations Human Rights Council, a body that normally addresses troubles in places such as Libya, Syria and the Ivory Coast.

The Geneva appearance is part of an NAACP strategy rooted in the 1940s and 1950s, when the group looked to the United Nations and the international community for support in its domestic battle for civil rights for blacks and against lynching.

"It was in 1947 that W.E.B. Du Bois delivered his speech and appealed to the world at the U.N.," NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous said Thursday. "Now, like then, the principal concern is voting rights. The past year more states in this country have passed more laws pushing more voters out of the ballot box than any point since Jim Crow."

Supporters of the new laws say the action by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a curious move, but one that isn't likely to produce tangible results.

"The NAACP can appeal to whatever body it chooses to - the U.N. doesn't run our elections," said Catherine Engelbrecht, president of True the Vote, a tea party-founded anti-voter fraud group that's seeking to mobilize thousands of volunteers to work as poll watchers and to validate existing voter-registration lists. "It has been talked to death whether or not (requiring) ID disenfranchises anyone."

Jealous acknowledged that the Human Rights Council has no direct authority over American states, but he hopes that it can exert influence through public pressure.